Future Shop
Clicking into the Future
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Company Overview
Future Shop is one of North America’s largest computer and electronics retailers and the preferred destination for customers seeking brand name computers, audio and video products, music CDs, major appliances, communications and business machines. Established in 1982, the Burnaby, B.C.-based company operates 84 superstores, five Computer City stores and the nation’s premier online electronics superstore at www.futureshop.ca. Future Shop is a premiere electronics retailer on the msn.ca, the home base for Canadian businesses on the World Wide Web. The company’s operating strategy is simple: to provide exceptional value to both the retail and corporate customer by offering a unique combination of guaranteed low pricing, brand name selection and unsurpassed customer service before, during and after the sale. Consequently, developing and executing an effective e-commerce strategy is key to Future Shop’s long-term success.
Business Challenge
Future Shop’s Web site has garnered much attention since it went live in November 1998. In March 2000, www.futureshop.ca placed fourteenth in PC Data Online’s survey of Top 50 Canadian Web sites (.ca) visited, drawing 449,000 unique users. But the steady increase in traffic was putting a strain on the infrastructure, requiring Future Shop to upgrade its e-commerce platform to remain competitive. “We wanted to have the same success online as Future Shop has in its bricks-and-mortar operations by offering customers added convenience and a greater depth and breadth of information and products,” says Behzad Khosrowshahi, Future Shop’s executive vice-president, merchandising. “We wanted to ensure our Web strategy could keep up with the promotional nature of our business and be sufficiently flexible to allow us to change at a moment’s notice. We needed a cost-effective system that could be implemented quickly and would grow with us into the future.” In late 1999, Future Shop issued a Request for Proposal to find a technology partner, and the contract was awarded to Microsoft in February 2000. Says Khosrowshahi: “The vendor we chose had to have be a leader in the e-commerce arena and be able to provide us with a technology with a successful track record. Microsoft’s comprehensive e-business platform proved a powerful solution on all fronts.”
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Solution
As of July 2000, www.futureshop.ca will run on Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system, Site Server Commerce Edition, and SQL Server 7.0 database infrastructure, creating one of the premiere e-commerce destinations in Canada. Microsoft’s development tools such as Visual Basic development system and Visual C++ will allow Future Shop to continually improve the site to meet the needs of its customers. Microsoft Consulting Services and consultants EDS Canada worked alongside Future Shop to design and implement the e-commerce strategy. Project implementation included integrating Future Shop’s content management and fulfillment systems to ensure customers receive a high-quality, end-to-end shopping experience; and, training of the Future Shop e-business team. Future Shop will also use Microsoft Office 2000 to maintain its business operations. Future plans include upgrades to Commerce Server 2000, BizTalk Server 2000, SQL Server 2000 and, perhaps, Windows 2000 Enterprise Server.
Business Benefits
With Microsoft’s e-commerce solution, Future Shop will be in a position to address business-to-business sales with online purchase order capability and convenient pick-up options (at any store location or delivery to customers’ locations). Future Shop will be able to cross-match products based on customers’ preferences, while customers will be able to cross-reference products and product reviews to make more informed buying decisions. All transactions will be tightly integrated with Future Shop’s back-end system. With SQL Server 7.0, Future Shop will reduce its total cost of ownership by easily building, managing and deploying online transaction processing (OLTP)-based applications. Future Shop expects to achieve faster processing times, save $3 million annually in operating costs and increase monthly sales fivefold right from day one. “Customers will have quick, convenient and seamless access to all Future Shop product and promotional information, with greater choices and options than ever before,” says Khosrowshahi. SQL Server 7.0 provides the ideal database platform for conducting electronic commerce, and because data warehousing solutions are easily designed, built and managed, Future Shop will be able to make effective business decisions based on timely and accurate information. Through Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) capabilities, Future Shop will increase performance and efficiency for corporate reporting, analysis, decision support, and data modeling. And with Integrated Data Transformation Services (DTS), the company can graphically build and automate the maintenance of data warehouses by enabling the import, export, and transformation of data from heterogeneous sources. According to Future Shop site manager John Verrier, the Web site has proven extremely reliable during load testing, which will come in handy during the upcoming holiday season. Development has gone smoothly, too. By standardizing on the SQL Server database infrastructure, Future Shop is able to reduce its total cost of ownership even further by retaining a technical team with a readily available skill set.
Dynamic platform proves sky’s the limit
Adopting a Microsoft e-commerce platform will impact future business initiatives and open new business opportunities as Future Shop moves forward. These initiatives will be visible to both internal users and to Future Shop customers through improvements in time-to-market, innovation and trial concepts, process improvement, store integration, site functionality, site performance and speed, and services and product offerings. “As new and evolving technologies become accessible to consumers – such as high home bandwidth and wireless and portable devices – we will be able to leverage our Microsoft foundation to deliver innovative, timely and personalized products and services, keeping in step with our customers’ growing expectations,” says Khosrowshahi.
The right partners make all the difference
Both Khosrowshahi and Verrier attribute much of the project’s success to the selection of business and technology partners with proven track records. “It’s crucial to position and foster an environment of knowledge transfer, involvement and calculated risk,” says Khosrowshahi. “Microsoft Consulting Services was extremely professional, knowledgeable and able to deliver on our high expectations of quality, resourcefulness and continually ‘doing the right thing.’ The overall technology is certainly proving to be reliable, scalable and flexible. Our e-business team is excited about the capabilities, opportunities and speed of deployment this technology brings to our environment. The Microsoft, Future Shop and EDS relationship has been a very positive one.”
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products or services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information via the World Wide Web, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/canada/casestudies
http://www.futureshop.ca
http://www.eds.ca
